Little Brother
Fear is very common. The fear of death is a well known one. But there are many more fears, fear of certain animals, for example. Many people fear sharks, tigers and other so-called "dangerous" animals. Others are scared of spiders. I’m not afraid of any of those. I never was; I mean, there are no sharks or tigers where I live, and what could a small spider do to me? However, there is one animal that scares me, no, it terrifies me and haunts me in my dreams. What is this animal? I’ll tell you. I’m afraid of dogs. That’s not special you say, let me tell you why I became so afraid of them. Then you’ll see it is special. I had a little brother. He was three years younger than me. We hated each other. Have you ever hated someone so much that you wanted to stab them? Well, that’s how much I hated him. He was annoying. He was always making noise. One day, just after my ninth birthday, I snapped. My friends had told me about some haunted house that they claimed could be used to scare him. My little brother, Max, was afraid of the dark. We decided that we would take him there, scare him, and then leave him there. It was really mean of us, but we were only kids and I really had enough of him. The house was not too far from my house, but still a good twenty minute walk. Max began to whine after five minutes, which annoyed me so much I almost hit him. We finally got to the house, then split up into teams of two, Max with my friend Jake. He knew his way around the house, so he could get away from Max without getting lost. My other friend, Noa, stayed with me. We would wait by the door until Jake got back. But when he didn’t come back, we began to worry. “Jake! You okay?” Noa yelled into the house. Not that it would have done any good, even if he could still hear us, the house was huge. Four floors plus the basement. “Hey, Max, you there?” Noa screamed, but it was no use. “Noa? Maybe we should look for Jake.” Noa turned toward me, “Yeah, I think we should. It’s getting late.” He picked up the flashlight I brought and we went in. “Hey, Noa, do you believe in ghosts?” I don’t know why I asked him that. Probably because of the surroundings. “Nah, that’s just bullshit.” Noa was a year older than me and always acted like he was a teen. He was nice to me, though, but not to anyone else. “Help! Help me,” Jake came running down the stairs. “What got into you?! You're acting like you saw a ghost,” Noa laughed. I hit him for laughing when Jake was so scared. “Don’t pay attention to him. So what’s the matter? He coughed a bit before pointing up stairs, “There’s a dog, it attacked us and-and.” He started crying. “It’s okay Jake, we’re here.” I knew Jake was scared of big dogs, so he was just spooked by it. “Do you want us to check up stairs?” Jake looked up and nodded. Jake was my age, but he was really small. He would probably grow taller than me later, but now I was slightly taller. “Here, doggie! Come and get us!” Noa called over and over again, which annoyed both Jake and me. “Could you cut it out?! It’s really annoying,” I snapped at Noa, who then shut up. The house was even bigger than it looked outside. The stairs creaked a lot, and I thought it could break any moment. Upstairs wasn’t any better, there were holes in the floor and walls. It also smelled like rotten wood, mold and damp. I got why people thought it was haunted, it was the definition of eerie. From one of the rooms we heard a growl. It was a low, ghastly growl. The three of us stopped in our tracks, Jake softly pushed his face in my back. “I’m scared,” Jake whispered into my back. Noa walked to the door, “Heh, you two are such wimps.” He opened the door, when it was open it revealed a truly gruesome scene. A large black dog sat in the middle of bloody pieces of flesh and organs. The dog growled again, it slowly got up. It twitched and limped as it did so. Blood was dripping from its mouth. Something about the dog was weird, well, other than the fact that it just killed my little brother. Jake screamed and started to cry again. I firmly held his hand, but didn’t cry or scream. That just isn’t me; I never cry. No matter how sad, painful or scary something is, I don’t cry. I was pulled back into reality by Noa who grabbed my other hand and ran for it, pulling me and Jake with him. We basically fell of the stairs, during which I scratched my knee. When we paused down stairs I saw that Jake had a nosebleed. He had probably hit Noa's back when stumbling down. Noa was bleeding a bit. He must have hit his head. “Noa, Jake are you okay?” I whispered between my panting. “Yes, I’m fine, but wimp here is still crying,” Noa replied boldly. “Noa, please. This isn’t the time for jokes,” I didn’t have the energy to be mad. Noa hung his head to say he was sorry. A soft growl came from behind us. Under the stair stood the dog. Its eyes were glowing in a hellish red. Its tail, was slim and was wagging irregularly. It approached us in the same limping manner. I couldn’t move. The dog looked at me with those hell-red eyes. Noa harshly shook me to get me to move, I snapped out of the trance and jumped up. The moment I got up the dog rushed at me. Its claws buried in my shoulders. I tried to free myself, but the dog was much stronger than me, and probably weighed twice as much. The dog opened its mouth, revealing a snake like tongue covered in a Grey fluid. It slowly licked my cheek. Its tongue made the same irregular movement as the tail. The grayish fluid smelled like rotten flesh. The smell was so intense, I felt like I was about to puke. Suddenly, the dog let out a loud screech, and stumbled back. Noa grabbed my arm and pulled me outside. When I looked back, I saw the dog had a sharp piece of wood in its side. Out of the wound came dark red blood. We ran to Noa's house, which was the nearest. After every ten steps I would look back, just to make sure it wasn’t following us. The next morning my parents would pick me up from Noa's house. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell them why we were there in the first place. We called the police and told them that a dog had attacked a little boy. They said they would tell us about their findings in the morning. The worst thing was to wait for my parents and tell them what happened. Yet the more I think about it the less it mattered, because I really didn’t care. No, I was happy that I finally got rid of that pest. So why did it hurt so much when my mom asked, “Sarah, sweetie. Where's your little brother?” Category:Demon/Devil Category:Places Category:Dismemberment